(1) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to liquid crystal display (LCDs) systems, comprising a microprocessor unit (MPU) and an LCD module comprising an LCD display and an LCD driver chip, and more particularly, to a circuit and a method to identify and to register in said LCD system information the physical characteristics of said LCD module and said LCD driver chip to provide an easy way to configure and customize the system software for said LCD driver chip and said LCD module.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
Every LCD module type and LCD driver chip type needs it own specific display driver software to be adapted to the specific requirements and parameters as specific memory organization, control register setting, number of characters per line required, contrast tables, etc. of specific LCD drivers. The system software of LCD display systems has to be configured according to the specific types of LCD-driver chips and LCD modules used. This situation makes multiple sourcing for LCD modules and LCD driver chips difficult, the system software required has to be adopted for each type of driver chip and LCD module used individually. Said specific adoption is a critical step in the manufacturing process.
In prior art multiple sourcing of LCD modules and LCD driver chips is often avoided to circumvent the handling problems linked with the requirement of customizing the driver software for every type of LCD modules and LCD driver chips used in the system with the disadvantage of not using the components available on the market at the best pricing conditions. Otherwise in prior art these multiple source components are being used on the expense of a significant handling effort for the complex customizing of the software, especially it has to be absolutely assured that the right software version is adopted to the specific type of LCD-driver chips and LCD-modules used in the LCD system.
Several prior art inventions describe the deployment of LCD-modules and LCD-driver chips. U.S. Pat. No. 5,825,341 to Pawlowski shows a control interface for a liquid crystal display having more than 80 characters using a pair of controller/driver devices. The usage of one or two standard controller/drivers of the same kind is recommended. U.S. Pat. No. 6,222,518 B1 to Ikeda et al. describes a data processing system including a bus and a display data generating circuit coupled to the bus for generating display data and a display apparatus coupled to the bus. U.S. Pat. No. 6,262,594 B1 to Cheung et al. discloses an integrated circuit chip having pads that are grouped into a number of groups and also having functional modules that share use of two or more groups of the pads for transferring signals to or from external circuitry.